If, then, you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you—sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all. Put on, then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. and be thankful, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. If I could just open us with a brief word of prayer before we begin again. Father, What we know not, teach us. What we have not, give us. And what we are not, make us. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. So we stare into this book of Colossians where I'm reminded that it seems to me to be somewhat similar to New City Presbyterian Church. It's a young church an influential place, but perhaps not as influential as some, like Laodicea. The church was full of zeal and operating in the context of a potpourri of religious opinions, a marketplace of ideas. And because of all this, confusion abounded. The problem laying beneath the surface is hard to diagnose at one level, but we do know that it's something related to being Jewish and probably Hellenistic at the same time. There's being Jewish and commingling that with pagan ideas like the asceticism or the don't eat, don't touch, don't do these things in Colossians 2, which implicitly denied the goodness of the created order, which was a hallmark of Hellenistic philosophy and religion, but not a hallmark of the Hebrew Bible and Judaism. It's difficult to tell, but we're probably dealing with some sort of syncretistic Judaism that threatened, in Paul's mind, to de-center Christ from the Colossians' minds, hearts, lives, priorities, hopes, and dreams. So we pick up the discussion of what it means to live a life centered on the person and work of Jesus in chapter 3, verse 1. We pick it up on a positive note. The verses before this are negative in that they're enjoining us not to do certain things, and we'll get a little bit of that, but this is largely a positive task that we should embark upon. We contrast that with what came before, the false teaching, anything which removes the finished work and person of Christ from the center of our lives our lived worldviews, is a philosophy that we want to reject. And so he says in chapter 2, verse 8, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. This philosophy wasn't the kind of philosophy we think of today at the university necessarily. It just meant for Paul a coherent way of thinking and living. Don't we feel that today? We feel all the time being ourselves squeezed into a different way of thinking, the pressure to de-center Christ from our lives and living our lives according to a different set of principles. It's a different ethic completely, a different worldview. So I came to church this morning. I came down through the middle of Ferndale and saw all kinds of flags flying. They weren't United States flags. If you don't feel this pressure to adopt a different way of thinking and a different way of living, you need to take your pulse. You're probably not alive. Something in Colossae was threatening to make Christ less than he truly is, and Paul will have none of it, and we shouldn't either. Most of us are not tempted to become observant Jews. So here is where we have to not just read the Bible but make an effort to truly understand it and apply it, and we must use our imaginations a little bit. There are ideas and practices and institutions and worldviews which can easily, easily supplant the centrality of Jesus if we're not careful. And in so doing, we lose sight of our identity, our activity, and our expected or rightful destiny. Across my news feed every once in a while now, because I think I must have clicked on a link at some point, comes a news item from the Daily Stoic. Apparently there's been a resurgence of Stoicism of all worldviews and philosophies. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are back in the news again. And someone's making a lot of money off of it. What about Carl Jung and the embodiment he plays now in Jordan Peterson and people like Andrew Tate on the Internet? What about an undefined amalgamation of the market and therapeutic that tells us that getting what I want and being the best version of me is the way to happiness? What Paul wants for the Colossians and what he wants for us is Christian maturity. And Christian maturity is just another way of saying Christlikeness. That is, we want to be like Jesus. So the compelling question as we begin this morning is how should we consider our identity and activity and our destiny in light of the great work of redemption and in terms of who God is? If you don't remember anything else from this sermon, then remember this, your identity drives or controls your activity, and these two things together will reveal or determine your destiny. As I hear myself say that, it feels a little like a televangelist, so I'm sorry, I apologize. I'm not nearly good-looking enough to be a televangelist, but I can tell you that this is indeed, it's not just three points. This is the very fabric of what Colossians 1, 1 through 17 is about. So let's start with identity. The question is, who are you? The scripture says, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above. Where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God, set your minds on things that are above, not on hidden things on the earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ and God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with him in glory. And if we jump down a few verses, we'll see another important contribution put on then in verse 12, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved. So their friends is our identity. John Calvin, in the opening pages of his Institutes, tells us there are two essential types of knowledge that we need, knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves. We must have both, and they both obviously relate to each other. The Shorter Catechism asks our children the question and asks us, what did the Scriptures principally teach? It's a very simple but beautiful, elegant answer. The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man. So today, this morning, we devote ourselves to figuring out what do we need to know about God and what do we need to know about our duty towards Him. And in doing so, I think we find out something about God and find out something about ourselves. So let's begin with God. Just a few quick points. If we have been raised with Christ and we are where Christ is, then we get a little picture, Paul says, we get a little vision into the very throne room of God. He is high and lifted up with the eternal sun at his right hand, ruling over creation, empowered with every conceivable perfection for his own glory. He is radiant in holiness and love. You remember Isaiah 6, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The earth is filled with his glory. This is the vision that the apostles had of the risen Christ with his heavenly father seated. And this leads us to a second truth, where God is is where Jesus is. The son is seated or sat down in session at the father's right hand until a certain time. He's not going to remain seated there forever, but he is for now. with his father united again in Trinitarian fellowship that he left to redeem his people. And with the Spirit is at work in the world, convincing the world and convicting the world of sin and empowering believers, empowering the church to live in holiness and produce fruit or good works. And it reminds us in the third place that Jesus is coming. Let me say that again. Jesus is coming. Scripture reminds us again and again that Jesus left us, but will return. He will not leave his people. He's returning not so much to take us somewhere, but to reestablish his kingdom on earth. The new Jerusalem in Scripture is the great and glorious city of God, and it will come down out of the heavens to us. It just boggles the mind to think about it. Every time I see one of these ads for some apocalyptic end-of-the-world movie, I think about what a poor and cheap imitation it is of what the new heavens and new earth is going to be like. So we see a picture here of God and his Son and Spirit in Trinitarian fellowship, high and lifted up, and we're being told that's where we are. How so? Well, that's where we talk about our identity. First of all, you and I as believers are in union with Christ. I don't know how familiar that term or that expression is to you, but it's an essential one. Union is the context for all the benefits of redemption that you and I enjoy. There is no election, regeneration, justification, adoption, sanctification, or glorification without this union, and it is a mystical union. You didn't know Presbyterians believed in mystery, but we do. It's this, the mystical union of Jesus with his people. John Murray called it the central truth of the entire doctrine of salvation. So we have union with Christ. If you read through the first chapter of Ephesians, you would see Paul again and again saying, in Christ, in Christ, in Christ. All of our benefits are in Christ. The specific language Paul uses here, then, in second point, is that we are raised. We're in union with Christ, and because of that, he was raised and we were raised. Romans 8.11 says that the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give your mortal bodies, life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. 1 Corinthians, Paul says, if there's no resurrection from the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain. So we know Jesus has been raised. And if he's been raised, then he will bring us. Our mortal bodies will also be raised. But now, Paul says, we've already been raised in some very real sense. We're positionally raised. Our identity is in union, raised, but we've also died. Our lives, he says, are gone and our lives are hidden with Christ. What have we died to? What has the Christian died to? We've died to the penalty and the power and the presence of sin. Condemnation of the law of God. Before I lost my voice, I was planning on singing these verses, but I'll just read them to you now. He breaks the power of canceled sin. He sets the prisoner free. His blood can make the foulest free. His blood availed for me. What does this mean? What does it mean that Christ actually and fully secured your redemption? winning you back from all that power of the devil, from the influence of the world, and he has disabled the controlling power of your sinful heart. What sense is our life hidden with Christ? I think Paul is referencing here various ideas present in his time in Jewish apocalyptic writings where salvation or anything related to God was hidden off somewhere in a place you couldn't know about it. You just trust me, that knowledge is somewhere you won't be able to get it. Hidden. And Paul is actually saying here that you could know, your life is hidden, but in point of fact, These false teachers, these people who say there's something hidden, he's telling you, yes, it's hidden until a time. It's being kept safe. It's being segmented off. But you can know, in fact, you're saved. You can know that you're in Christ. He's co-opting the very language that the false teachers would have used for his purposes. It's just not fully revealed yet. Christ has not returned, so you are safe, you are secure, but you don't know fully what it looks like yet. And finally, your identity is that you will appear with Jesus in glory, and I want to return to that at the end of our time. So the summary is, you're raised, you're dead to all that controlled and condemned you before, and your life and future are fully secure and safe, and you are destined to appear with Jesus. You can be completely at peace because the one who had the power of life and death is, through Jesus, completely at peace with you. Now I want to contrast this briefly here. I want you to pause for one moment this morning and ask yourself, how much time do you spend each week, each day, meditating on this amazing and glorious vision of God and what He has done and what He will do for you? Of all the time you spend thinking, how much of it is on what is eternal? Or do you spend most of your time thinking on what will be taken? Your appearance, for example, your health, your fitness, your beauty, all will disappear. Your wealth will be gone. Your reputation will be forgotten. Your family, even, will be gone. And your dream job, your dream career, your dream home, your dream car, your dream spouse, All those things, if they are not Jesus, will be gone. Only Jesus will last. Those things are not bad things, obviously, but they're gifts, right? They're gifts and not the giver. And we have the uncanny ability as people to confuse the gift with the giver. I know this practically in my own heart. And how do I know when I'm confusing the gift and the giver? Well, all you have to do to test me is take the gift away. And then you'll find out really quickly, oh, I was really attached to that gift, not the giver. Second, if we have an identity, we know it must drive or control an activity. So Paul seems to tell us there are things we need to do. What do we need to do in verses 3, 1 through 4? And he gives us a general idea, and then he takes a number of verses and plows into some very particular and specific things. So let's talk about the general first. First, we seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. And second, he tells us to set our minds on things that are above. So we have two things to do, and I think they're roughly the same thing, equivalents. to seek and to set our minds on things, repetition for imprinting this on your mind. The logic Paul employs here is designed to root you in the eternal truths of the gospel and tell you, if you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that are there. If you've been raised with Christ, search out and set your minds on those things. Here's the key. Everyone lives in light. of ultimate realities. Whatever is ultimate to us, we live in light of those realities. It's an inescapable reality itself to say that we live in light of a telos, an end, something that we're driving toward, something, a finish line in front of us. And this drive to seek and to set our minds on things isn't so much a call to possess something because you already have it if you're in Christ. It's a call to recalculate or reorient your life so that this already existing reality becomes real for you, tangible. The lack of new desires for this new world, for some, may be an indication that you do not possess the new life in Christ. Contrast this with Paul's enemies here, the people who are the false teachers in chapter 2. Their philosophy begins, they'll tell you, take your earthly situation as your starting point, and then by your own efforts and techniques, move beyond the bodily. Move beyond and gain visionary experience and ascend into the heavenly spheres. Something like Stoicism. Paul moves in exactly the reverse direction. He says your starting point is there, up, outside of you, and then comes down into you by the power of the Holy Spirit and changes you inside out. Paul gives us this wonderful picture telling us in Philippians that you do not know that all in a race, all the runners run, but only one receives the prize. So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable reef, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly. It's so easy to let our eyes fall to the things that are perishable. And God in Colossians is calling us to fix our eyes on that which is imperishable. Fix our eyes on the things that are eternal and run with an aim of grasping hold of that and not on the things that will disappear. This is the general exhortation, set your minds, seek. Now he gets specific in the rest of the passage. He tells us a number of things to do. First of all, he tells us what we must kill or regard as dead and to put away. I wish we had time to go through all these one by one. But it is interesting to see that there is a pattern here. He says, put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these things, the wrath of God is coming. And these you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. So we'll stop at that point and just notice that we have two lists of vices. immorality, sexual immorality, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and greed, followed by anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk. It's almost like the Holy Spirit knew that it wasn't just written for Paul, it was going to have to be written for you and me today, too. These two lists, which roughly correspond to sins of sexual identity and sins of relationships, primarily rooted in the family of sins of anger. Paul seems very prescient. I could take a show of hands and see whose lives haven't been touched by inappropriate sexual desire or poorly functioning relationships characterized by anger and gossip and lies, but we'd all raise our hands. These are universals, and Paul highlights them here because he knows that very thing. He can address this within the first century in nearly 2,000 years in a way that ministers to our modern world and shows that Paul and the Bible and God is as relevant today as he ever has been. I'm not going to run through a list of all these sins, but I would think it would be a wonderful opportunity for you to do that. The first list, the second list, and then contrast it with the list I'm going to talk to you about in a minute. But just let each of these sins kind of read you and read your life and ask a loved one, perhaps, to evaluate you. He says, therefore, because he's making connection to the preceding verses explicit, because your theological reality and your identity is different, you must live differently. You've got two options for this language of consider dead or kill. I like the phrase kill or mortify. But either way, you're either considering yourselves dead to these things because you've been raised with Christ, or you're going to kill these attitudes and behaviors in your own life. Romans 8.13 tells us, for if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the needs of the body, you will live. Paul seems to leave us with no other options except to say, if you want to live, you're going to be killing something. Or at least regarding that stuff as dead to you. Certainly don't get warm and cozy with these kinds of things. It's not so much just sins of the body. We're not anti-body. We're not anti-material. What we are is anti-sin. But God begins where we are. He does not leave us there. God's grace is transforming grace, or it's not His grace. Let's take a look at what earns the wrath of God. Immorality, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and greed. All these things must be put away as incompatible with the kingdom. My experience, and perhaps yours too, is that a great number of us as Christians often are pretending We're pretending that these kinds of things, these sins, are not in our homes. that the internet history doesn't tell the story that it does, or the Netflix count won't tell a bad tale, or the dad's anger really isn't that bad, or the drinking isn't really that bad, or the inability to admit wrongdoing is not a fatal flaw, or that the teenager's mouth and heart or text messages aren't really filled with malice and slander and obscene talk. And we perhaps say instead that a focus on these things is legalism, In short, holiness is far from our minds often because Jesus, high and lifted up, is far from our minds. The Christian life, by contrast, is growth and holiness in Christ's likeness, and it is active. We don't just stumble through the world passively picking up character flaws or virtues. We actively seek them out, sins and deceptions and lies and works of the flesh. So too, we must actively seek out our new identity and the identity's fruit. But he says in verse eight, but now, but now, he's worth noting, Paul says that what used to characterize you doesn't any longer. He tells them not to lie to one another, saying that you've put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. And here he says there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and in all. This language of put on and put off is very Pauline, but almost certainly has the idea of baptism beneath it. Colossians earlier says, In him you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism. And Galatians 3 tells us, For as many of you were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ, Last week, we were privileged to watch some of our younger disciples take on the mantle of baptism. We need to tell ourselves again and again what this baptism means. It's a new identity for these young people. It is not the means to social acceptance or respectability or a better life, a way to please their parents, or a time just to simply join the church. Baptismal vows we take as confessions of the faith on behalf of covenant children are immensely important, because they signal there's a new identity in play. Here in this new estate, humanity has no earthly distinction. Note that the uncircumcised barbarians, Scythian, all these people are not cleaned up people. They are not people with their acts together. They are unrefined, uncouth, poorly attired, uninitiated in the ways of Judaism or Hellenism, or uninitiated to the ways of Presbyterianism. They are inarticulate, uneducated, and uncultured. They don't know any of the answers on the test. And yet here they are, standing, waiting to receive, with open arms and open hands, Jesus himself. The gospel comes to the sick, the needy, and the ill-prepared, the ones who do not know what to wear before or after Labor Day. So then, if I'm putting those things off, what am I putting on? I'm putting on, then, and it reminds us right at the outset of our identity again, as God's chosen ones, Holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Another list of five virtues this time. So we contrast immorality, uncleanness, passion, evil desires, greed, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk with compassion, with kindness, with humility, with meekness and with patience. And you're very aware, I'm sure, that there's another passage, Galatians chapter five, where this is referred to the fruit of the Spirit. We're called to put on these things, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving one another as the Lord has forgiven us, so we too must forgive. Paul is not a Pollyanna. The fruit will come in our lives through bearing of others' burdens and forgiving them. We live in community with each other. We're going to bump up against each other in our homes, in our communities, and here at New City Presbyterian Church. It's going to take bearing of burdens and forgiving people. And then he tells them, to continue the clothing metaphor, he says, and above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. I would seem to say that he's imagining that you're putting on a garment, putting off another garment, and then at the end, you're taking this final garment, putting it on, and maybe tightening the belt, and that's love. This shouldn't be a surprise to us, right? What is the soil in which the great two commandments of God grow? Love. 1 John 4 tells us God is love. His ontology, His very being is love. Trinitarian love, but love. So too, He commands us to love because we are in Him. So we have a new identity, and now we have activities that were being given both general and specific, and now we finally get to our destiny. And the question is, where am I going? Where am I headed? How exciting to see our four graduates from high school this year and know those of us who are a little older will know all of the wonderful things that await them, Lord willing. But far be it from us and for me this morning to tell those graduates that their lives will be perfect, their lives will be painless, free of any trouble. What I can tell them is the Lord Jesus Christ will be with them. I can tell them that throughout every situation that they find themselves hopeless in, they can have hope because of who Jesus is. We back up to our first set of verses and it says, when Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with him in glory. And I'd like to suggest to you this morning that I think we have both a near horizon destiny and a far horizon destiny. The near horizon is a beautiful picture of the body of Christ. Christ's very body where Christians have died to themselves and are actually putting sin off and putting righteousness on so that the body is built up. You see that in verses 15 and 16. It's a wonderful couple of verses there I wish we could go into more detail about. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which you indeed were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. This is the local church, friends. This is what we're supposed to do. This is our, among other things, our mission, our calling. We're supposed to let the Word of Christ dwell richly in us. And we're supposed to teach one another, admonish one another, and we're encouraging one another with our songs and our prayers. These Christians are those men and women and children who've been given a new identity in union with Jesus, their Savior, and this necessarily issues forth into good works and into new desires, priorities, and loves and activities. These are behaviors, and these new behaviors are indicators, like the indicator lights on your dash, that there's an eternal destiny in view, an eternal weight of glory, as Paul says in another place, that is very nearly unimaginable. Some of you told me that you saw some of the recent pictures I posted on social media from my recent trip to Greece. I can tell you that the pictures are technically accurate. I took them. But they convey almost nothing of the grandeur and the majesty of being there. The pictures don't tell the full story. Likewise, I think God gives us these pictures, if you will, of what unbroken fellowship then will be like, and what restored fellowship will be like, but it can't do justice to the reality. So in one sense, this passage this morning, these 17 verses, is very easy and straightforward. We see who we are, we see a positive command, and we see some negative commands. There you go. But if we leave out one of them, or we get the emphasis wrong, all kinds of problems can arise. If we focus exclusively on our destiny, we quickly forget that God uses means to get us there. Let go and let God is popular, but it's not particularly helpful. Likewise, if we focus on activity, we'll busy ourselves with religious observances, good things in and of themselves, but you'll forget why you came to church, why you're reading your Bible, why you're serving the body, why you're denying yourself, and you will burn out. And lastly, we forget our identity, or we focus on our identity, we'll be filled with all kinds of good theology, but be ineffectual, because we too have forgotten that doctrine is for living. And I might add, doctrine is for living forever. So if we take a step back from all the details and notice where we are in the story, that is where Colossians and these verses are, what if the story about a good creation gone desperately bad because of a treasonous act of betrayal on the part of our ancestor resulted in us being trapped in a world where only darkness and evil could be known or experienced? And what if the one sinned against forgave and forgave it all? And in spite of what we know and experience now, the promises for a completely restored universe and a completely restored you and me is what we have to look forward to. Perhaps your problem, like me this morning, isn't so much do you figure out all the details of Colossians 3, which are beautiful, but to realize that God is doing exactly what He said He would do, and asks you, much like you might ask a well-meaning but frequently misinterpreting child, just to trust Him. Take Him at His word and walk into that life, the life that is to come. I think it's good for us to reflect back on Colossians 1 as we close. He is the image of the invisible God. the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions, rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. and he is the head of the body of the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn of the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent, for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of the cross. I don't want to convince you this morning so much that Christianity is true, but that the crucified Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, is who he says he was. the Savior of the world, and that He is worthy of every ounce of your effort, your affection, your trust, and your very life. Would you pray with me?